Tag: Zionism

Teargas on the Playground

Children in the Aida refugee camp – 7/10ths of a densely packed, square kilometer containing nearly 6,000 people on the outskirts of Bethlehem – have one playground.  It is nestled behind the Lajee Center, one of several community development organizations in this Palestinian community.

No one goes to the playground hoping to play dodge-ball with incendiary teargas canisters, not even Palestinian kids.  But it never hurts to be prepared.  Especially when there is an active Israeli military base across the street from the swing sets and the slide.

Actually, the concrete Annexation Wall (as I call it) is directly across the

Annexation Wall & sniper tower overlooking Aida refugee camp

street, but the resident army unit snuggles tightly against their side of the barrier overlooking the playground.  So, the soldiers have a bird’s eye view of the little boys pushing their toy cars in the sand box.

The army base also has its own set of steel gates, large enough to accommodate trucks, tanks and fully loaded personnel carriers, built into the Wall that grants them immediate access to Aida’s largest street.  The very street passing by the Lajee Center and its playground.

This mammoth, gray gate can only be opened and closed from the outside, the Israeli army side.  The residents of Aida have no control at all.  They cannot lock the soldiers out of their neighborhood, but the soldiers can, and do, invade their homes as they please.

What seems to please the Israeli soldiers most often these days is shooting teargas, rubber bullets and skunk water at the people whose only “crime” is being Palestinian living in Israeli-occupied territory.

Naturally, the crime of being Palestinian includes little children, too.

Why else would Israeli soldiers fire teargas onto the Lajee Center

Children run from teargas on their playground

playground, terrorizing Aida’s preschoolers that sunny, spring morning?  It’s hard for a 4-year-old to outrun the gas, especially when the wind speeds its dispersal.  But the youngsters do their best.  Fortunately, most of them have a parent or older sibling present to help their escape.

The soldiers paused occasionally as they strolled down the wide street, gas masks covering their faces.  Over and over they calmly lobbed canisters of fuming noxious smoke among the panic-stricken children.

Imagine the chaos as people flee in all directions, either trying to escape the plumes of blinding gas or frantically searching for their little ones now vanishing inside a wet cloud of white smoke that can easily suffocate a small child in less than a minute.

Teargas blinds your senses.  It blinds your eyes with incredible, stinging pain, flooding your cheeks with acidic tears.  It also blinds your brain to the neural impulses that tell your lungs TO BREATHE!  So, you think you can’t.

Teargas in the streets

First, because of the burning gas torching your mouth and throat, you can’t breathe.

Second, because your brain has been tricked into suppressing the automatic reflex, you can’t breathe without great, deliberate effort.  But, unless you’ve covered your mouth sufficiently or escaped the cloud of smoke, taking another breath of teargas is the last thing you want to do.  But you need to breath!  So, what do you do

Soldiers do as they please, when they please, wherever they please. This day it pleased them to shoot teargas at little children

I have no idea how the minds and bodies of tiny infants, delicate toddlers, baby brothers and bigger sisters managed to cope with this surprise attack.  Nor do I know the stories of the family members and friends, all blinded themselves, whose only thought was to rescue the screaming child they heard somewhere off in the murky distance. (I heard this story from a friend who filmed the incident as it unfolded from the balcony of her home.  The image above is one frame from that film.)

No one had expected to play dodge-ball with teargas canisters on the playground that day.

But Israeli soldiers are inventive at coming up with new games to play with Palestinians, especially in the Occupied Territories.  And aren’t we told repeatedly that this is the most moral army in the world defending the only democracy in the Middle East?

It’s Official: Israel is a Racist State by Law

Israel’s Knesset has passed a new Basic Law – a series of laws that substitute for Israel’s non-existent constitution – called the Jewish Nation-State Law.  You can read the full text of the law here.

Israel has always struggled to defend its contradictory claim of being a Jewish and a democratic state, simultaneously.  Critics, which most recently includes members of Israel’s Supreme Court, have long pointed out that establishing a state only for Jews undermines its claims to democracy, which requires equality for everyone, Jews and non-Jews alike.

Many Israeli legislators have worried about the court’s bizarre tendency to acknowledge this obvious contradiction and to rule accordingly, issuing decisions which typically favor democracy above Zionist racial profiling.

Horrors!

But, don’t worry.  Israel’s political Zionists have a plan.  Enter the new

Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked

Jewish Nation-State Law.  One of the law’s staunchest supporters is the current Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked who openly laments the court’s tendency, when forced to pick between Jewishness or democracy, to defend the democratic principle of equality before the law.

Now the Jewish Nation-State Law will force even the highest court in the land to change its evil ways and acknowledge that, in the land of Israel, Jewish ethnicity rules supreme.  As Justice Minister Shaked declared in a Knesset debate last February

“There are places where the character of the State of Israel as a Jewish state must be maintained and this sometimes comes at the expense of equality.”  (emphasis mine)

Ms. Shaked’s thoughts on how to respond to Palestinian resistance against Israel’s military occupation.

Speaking in Jerusalem at the Israeli Congress on Judaism and Democracy the Justice Minister reaffirmed her position, insisting that Israel

“is a Jewish state and not a state for all of its nationalities…the Supreme Court should stop upholding the former at the expenses of Israel’s religious values…We need to protect the Jewish character of the state even if that means sacrificing human rights.” (emphasis mine)

Opposition leaders, some of whom are also Arab legislators, voiced their opposition to the law (here, here and here).  But they lost by a 62 – 55 vote.  This new “constitutional amendment” has thrown down the gauntlet on the world stage.  The message is clear:

Behold, here we stand!  Israel.  A racist, apartheid, Zionist nation-state, and we are proud of ourselves.

What will the world’s civilized nation-states do now?

The Blatant Hypocrisy of “Liberal Zionism” #zionism #christianzionism

Liz Rose, a public school teacher and writer living in Chicago, has an excellent article in Mondoweiss (6/27/18) explaining the hypocrisy of liberal Zionism.  It is entitled “It’s time for Tom Friedman to face the contradictions of liberal Zionism, and move on.”

Because Friedman frequently waves his Zionist banner in the pages of the New York Times, he has become the paradigmatic liberal Zionist in America whose blind loyalty to Israel forces him to speak out of both sides of his mouth.

Trump with al-Sisi

On the one hand, Friedman and his Zionist compatriots complain about an American president embracing fascist dictators, such as Egypt’s al-Sisi, but they remain deafeningly silent about America’s blind support for Israel’s far-right leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump with Netanyahu

Friedman happily quotes and defends Human Right’s Watch when it condemns the abuse of human rights in Egyptian, but he will ignore or condemn the same organization when it highlights identical abuses suffered by Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

Here is an excerpt.  You can find the full article here.  It is well worth reading.

“It’s becoming more and more difficult for liberal Zionists to balance their support for human rights and global justice in Trump’s America with their support for Israel. But liberal Zionists in the U.S. still believe they can.

“This tension is evident in Thomas Friedman’s June 19, 2018, opinion piece in the New York Times, “Trump to Dictators: Have a Nice Day.” Friedman compares Trump to dictators and defends human rights, but Israel is left out of the column, and it feels like a glaring evasion. “What’s terrifying about Trump is that he seems to prefer dictators to our democratic allies everywhere,” Friedman rightly suggests, and uses North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as his examples. These dictators don’t just “crush their revolutionaries or terrorists but even their most mild dissenters,” Friedman writes.  There’s no “space for even loyal opposition.” Friedman is correct, of course, that dissent is criminalized in these countries, and that Trump’s administration puts no limit on these dictators.

“When looking at Friedman’s column with a non-Zionist lens, however, the alliance between Trump and Netanyahu seems simply too obvious to leave out.  Netanyahu’s dictator-like behavior is clear. The recent murder of 135 Palestinians at the Gaza border (and the wounding of more than 14,000), the U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem that Netanyahu pushed, Israel’s decision to ban 20 groups who support BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) from entering Israel, and the ongoing occupation and colonization of the Palestinian people that Israel has never taken responsibility for, are just a few indicators of Netanyahu’s desire for total control.

“That Netanyahu is left out of this column speaks to this growing tension between a universal liberalism and liberal Zionism; to reconcile the two, Friedman is forced to avoid the topic altogether.

“Similarly, Friedman can only sound as though he supports human rights if Israel is not mentioned.  He cites Human Rights Watch to show the changes occurring in Egypt:

“Take Egypt. On May 31, Human Rights Watch reported that the Egyptian police had ‘carried out a wave of arrests of critics of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in dawn raids since early May 2018.’ Those arrested included Hazem Abd al-Azim, a political activist; and Wael Abbas, a well-known journalist and rights defender; as well as Shady al-Ghazaly Harb, a surgeon; Haitham Mohamadeen, a lawyer; Amal Fathy, an activist; and Shady Abu Zaid, a satirist.

“Again, Friedman accurately warns of increased censorship among Egypt’s citizens.  But a site like Human Rights Watch becomes a convenient and valid source for liberal Zionists as long as it is not used to criticize Israel.  When it does, it is accused of perpetuating an anti-Israel bias, rather than being a source that has authority and shows human rights violations by Israel. But Friedman’s liberal Zionism prevents him from acknowledging that Israel might violate the very rights he insists all people should have. For liberal Zionists, however, the only way Zionism and human rights can coexist is to erase Palestinian history and give Israel a pass.”

Munther Amira’s Statement after Prison Release #Palestinians #Israelioccupation

I am happy to say that my friend, Munther Amira, was released from an Israeli military prison about 1 1/2 weeks ago. Munther released a thank you statement on Facebook yesterday, and I want to share it with any of my readers who may have participated in the “free Munther” actions I posted here.

Recall that Munther was arrested for quietly, non-violently protesting Israel’s policy of imprisoning children in its military prisons. He was peacefully walking down the street in his own neighborhood holding up a picture of the Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi, who remains in prison for the “crime” of slapping one of the soldiers who shot her young cousin in the head.

Here is Munther’s letter:

JUN 17, 2018 — My dear friends,

I would like to start my message “post” by thanking each and every woman, man, organization, union, and group for your tremendous support and solidarity. My imprisonment is no more than one small event in the series of the long lasting occupation’s violations of human rights. Since the beginning of occupation 70 years ago, the violations of human rights never stopped. They just varied in shape from cold blood killing, to injuring or imprisoning. They included land confiscation, home demolitions, road blockage, siege, exile, individual and public punishments, all of which contribute to a system of ethnic cleansing. All of which destroy human lives, deprive freedom, erase dignity, end lives, kill hope, and steal childhoods.

My short, but tough and humiliating, six month imprisonment empowered me and strengthened my convictions. Since the beginning I knew that the nonviolence approach I adopted to defend Palestinians human rights, dignity, and freedom will be difficult. This is still true and was confirmed by the violence of the Israeli occupation’s response to my, and many other activists, nonviolent resistance. Your solidarity and support makes it easier for me and others like me to lead this every day fight.

This support will empower the nonviolence movement in Palestine in this long-term endeavor. I hope this support will continue and grow in scale and forms.
During my imprisonment I met with comrades, spending, 36, 30, 28 or 26 years in Israeli political prisons. A lifetime of prison is their fate on this earth. Each of them has their own heartbreaking and incredibly strong story. I listened to them tell me about their dreams, feelings, and hopes for freedom. I learned from their enthusiasm and was stunned by their positive, ongoing energy. They have an incredible discipline and are eager to learn and to teach each other. In prison, I attended lectures discussing global sustainable environments, social sciences, human rights, and international humanitarian laws. It was not – and is still not – easy for me to grasp the source of their hope, their energy, and their ability to think about things like economics and the environment, all while living in a 9 square meter cell.

I saw them touch the glass separating them and their mothers during the monthly visits, imagining they could actually feel them.
I admire their spirit, and hope that one day, sooner rather than later, they will wake up outside, next to their loved ones. As a human rights defender, activist, social worker, father, and most importantly as a human, I and many others in and outside of Palestine will continue our peaceful fight for justice, dignity, freedom and a brighter future.

Finally, I would to like to thank you all again, and to extend my gratitude to all your tremendous support during my time in Israel’s kangaroo courts, which fail to meet the basic standards of fair trial and due process.
These military courts are designed to criminalize Palestinian rejection of the occupation and punish Palestinians for demanding their basic human and national rights. They are a conveyor belt of convictions and injustice that prosecute between 500 and 700 Palestinian children every year, with a near 100 percent conviction rate.

I would like to thank all who demonstrated in the streets, and those who were punished for it. Thank you to the 15,000 people who signed the petition for my freedom. I wish I could thank them all one by one. Thank you to all human rights defenders, unions, human rights NGOs, grassroots NGOs, journalist, bloggers, individuals and groups.

Last but not least I would like to thank my family who has stood by me in this dangerous endeavor from the very first day.

Munther Amira
Aida Refugee Camp
Occupied Palestinian Territories

(Posted on Facebook on 17 June 2018)

Israel, the Great Western Narrative and the Kingdom of God #zionism #jonathancook

Jonathan Cook, a British journalist living and working in Nazareth, Israel.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist living and working in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001.  You can find his biography and CV, including his many books, here.

I read Mr. Cook’s blog regularly. I also check out any of his articles or books whenever I come across them.

Yesterday, The Greenville Post (another excellent website I read regularly) published a Cook article entitled “How the Corporate Media Enslave Us to a World of Illusions.” Cook describes the slow evolution of his own social, political and historical consciousness as his work in journalism taught him to recognize something he calls the “Great Western Narrative.”

I hope you will take the time to read Cook’s article.  He is extremely insightful.  I have posted an excerpt below with a link to the entire article.

Cook’s analysis can be particularly challenging for Christians. He not only diagnoses the ways in which western Christians succumb to establishment propaganda, just like everyone else — no, brothers and sisters, we are not immune to the dangers of brainwashing —

But Cook’s advice for breaking free of the “Great Western Narrative” and learning to understand and engage in this world from a more humane perspective, is very similar to the argument I tried to make for Christian readers in my book I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America.

Christian disciples can only perceive this world aright, that is, from a New Testament, heavenly perspective, when we learn to replace the Great Western Narrative with Jesus’ own Narrative of the Kingdom of God.

That should be a lifetime goal for every follower of Jesus.  Yet, it is so much easier to live as loyal Americans than it is to be faithful citizens of God’s kingdom on earth.

This, in a nutshell, is the goal of my blog. Everything I write at HumanityRenewed, is something (I hope) that will help us to peel off the worldly consciousness — the Great Western Narrative — that works overtime to hold us captive and cripple our ability to live out God’s Kingdom citizenship in the here and now.

Nowhere is the evangelical church’s idolatry of the Great Western Narrative, coupled with its abandonment of Jesus’ Narrative of the Kingdom of God, more evident than in its blind devotion to Christian Zionism and the state of Israel, whatever its crimes.

Here is the excerpt:

“Israel is enthusiastically embraced by the Great Western Narrative: it is supposedly a liberal democracy, many of its inhabitants dress and sound like us, its cities look rather like our cities, its TV shows are given a makeover and become hits on our TV screens. If you don’t stand too close, Israel could be Britain or the US.

“But there are clues galore, for those who bother to look a little beyond superficialities, that there is something profoundly amiss about Israel. A few miles from their homes, the sons of those western-looking families regularly train their gun sights on unarmed demonstrators, on children, on women, on journalists, on medics, and pull the trigger with barely any compunction.

“They do so not because they are monsters, but because they are exactly like us, exactly like our sons. That is the true horror of Israel. We have a chance to see ourselves in Israel – because it is not exactly us, because most of us have some physical and emotional distance from it, because it still looks a little strange despite the best efforts of the western media, and because its own local narrative – justifying its actions – is even more extreme, even more entitled, even more racist towards the Other than the Great Western Narrative.

“It is that shocking realisation – that we could be Israelis, that we could be those snipers – that both opens the door and prevents many from stepping through to see what is on the other side. Or, more troubling still, halting at the threshhold of the doorway, glimpsing a partial truth without understanding its full ramifications.”

You can read Cook’s entire article here.

Oy Vey! Thomas Friedman Gives Palestinians More Unsolicited Advice #zionism #palestinians #gazaprotests

Liz Rose has a fine article at Mondoweiss.net about Thomas Friedman’s latest bit of unsolicited advice for the Palestinian refugees held prisoner in Gaza.  Here is an excerpt from her piece:

“One of the advantages of being a liberal Zionist is that you never have to take responsibility for what Zionism does.  You can blame Palestinians for their own demise, maintain a sense of righteousness while people die, and defend Israel no matter what it does.  And you can state emphatically that you know what Palestinians need to do, though you’ve never considered their experience.  They exist, for you, only in a theoretical sense.

“’Just what are we going to do about the Palestinians,’ you and your liberal Zionist friends can ask over lattes and chai teas at coffee shops.  And when you write about them, you can consider the Palestinian people only as a theory–something abstract to be grappled with–rather than human beings who deserve the dignity and freedom that you have.  You don’t ever have to acknowledge Palestinian history or experience.

“Take, for example, Thomas Friedman’s May 23, 2018, opinion piece in The New York Times, ‘Hamas, Netanyahu and Mother Nature.’  Friedman’s critique–which shakes its finger at the Palestinians who have screwed up again–is yet another liberal Zionist apology for Israel’s recent massacre of 62 people at the Gaza border.  ‘If Hamas had chosen to recognize Israel and build a Palestinian state in Gaza modeled on Singapore,’ Friedman writes, ‘the world would have showered it with aid and it would have served as a positive test case for the West Bank.’  Using an ‘If-X-then-Y’ equation, Friedman knows what’s best for what ails Palestinians.  If they just behaved better, he declares, Israel’s treatment of them would improve.”

You can read the entire Mondoweiss article here.

If you follow my blog, you will remember the piece I wrote several months ago entitled “Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?”.  I referred to a similar Friedman suggestion offered in 2002, urging the Palestinian people to send their women, especially grandmothers, unarmed to the front lines to confront Israeli forces with massive, Gandhi-like non-violent protests.

We all saw how Israel responded to that strategy in April and May during the Gaza Land Day Marches.  More than 100 unarmed men, women – including grandmothers – and children were shot and killed by Israeli snipers.  Over 13,000 were seriously injured.

Zionist apologists like Friedman have employed all their tricks of mental, ethical gymnastics in justifying the slaughter.  No matter what the Palestinians do, their deaths are always their own fault.  Unsurprisingly, Mr. Friedman remains stunningly unaware of how brazenly immoral his unsolicited advice continues to be.

For not only does he fail to make the connection between his heartfelt 2002 recommendation of Palestinian self-immolation, he essentially repeats it in a recent New York Times Opinion Piece he calls “Hamas, Netanyahu and Mother Nature.”

“What if all two million Palestinians of Gaza marched to the Israeli border fence with an olive branch in one hand and a sign in Hebrew and Arabic in the other, saying, ‘Two states for two peoples: We, the Palestinian people of Gaza, want to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish people — a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, with mutually agreed adjustments.’”

Except, we have all seen that movie, Mr. Friedman.  We already know how it ends: 100+ innocent civilians dead and over 13,000 injured, many crippled for life.

For his own safety, the New York Times should take away Friedman’s pen.  People exhibiting such evidence of advanced dementia, amnesia and/or psychosis should not be allowed to play with sharp objects.

Besides, it just plain hurts to see such deep-seated, pathological moral blindness on display in the opinion pages of one of the world’s leading  newspapers.

Perhaps Mr. Friedman needs a reminder:

  1. NO ONE could walk to the “border fence,” Mr. Friedman, because Israel has never declared its officially recognized borders. (Hard to believe but true). Israel simply grasps more land while the world impotently watches.  The fence you refer to is a Gulag barrier where Israel forcibly contains 1.8 million Palestinian refugees. It does not mark a border.
  2. Almost 30,000 residents of Gaza have already tried your Gandhi tactic, Mr. Friedman. But you know that.  You also remember, as I do, the words of General Amos Gilad (Director of Policy and Political-Military Affairs at the Israel Ministry of Defense) when he told American government officials, “we don’t do Gandhi very well.”  This was his tongue-in-cheek explanation for Israel’s 2011 decision “to increase violent pressure on the demonstrations ‘even [if the] demonstrations appear peaceful.’”  You know as well as I do that Israel shoots Gandhi whenever and wherever they see him, Mr. Friedman.
  3. Please, Mr. Friedman, save your protestations about the lack of Palestinian olive branches and peace signs written in Hebrew and Arabic. What will your excuse be next time: “If only 2 million Palestinians approached the fence and shot themselves in the head, saving Israeli ammunition, THEN…”?
  4. Mr. Friedman, you know as well as I do that Yasir Arafat, the leader of the PLO, acknowledged Israel’s right to exist in 1988. And even though Hamas still does not acknowledge Israel’s right to exist (see point 5 below), according to its new 2017 charter, they no longer demand Israel’s destruction and have welcomed the creation of a separate Palestinian state in the lands occupied in the six-day war of 1967 (here, here, and here).
  5. Finally, Mr. Friedman, your political Zionist bona fides are fully displayed when you direct the people of Gaza to confess that they “want to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish people” (emphasis mine).  Notice that the object of the sentence is not the state of Israel but the Jewish people.  Here, finally, is the racist bone that will forever stick in the Palestinian throat, as it does in mine. This outrageous demand ought to stir the entire world to reject “the legitimacy” of the current state of Israel. For here Mr. Friedman and his Zionist compatriots openly confess that Israel is a state for the Jewish people and no one else. All non-Jews are second-class citizens under the rule of political Zionism. No one with a conscience can defend Israel’s “right to exist” as long as it remains a racist state of, for and by Jews alone.

As Archie Bunker used to say, Mr. Friedman, stifle yourself.  Your so-called advice is stale, rehashed Zionist propaganda.

You and yours are morally bankrupt.

You take the vitriol of a racist, apartheid state, siphon it through your effete blender of “reasoned discourse” and offer your readers a sensible justification for mass murder.

You and Joseph Goebbels could be kissin’ cousins.

Noura Erakat Explains Gaza Protests & Palestinian Grievances on CBSN #gazakillings #zionism #nouraerakat

Professor Noura Erakat

Last week I came across an excellent CBSN interview with Noura Erakat talking about the recent protests in Gaza and the massacre of unarmed Palestinians there.

Ms. Erakat is a Palestinian-American human rights attorney and an Assistant Professor at George Mason University.  You can check out her impressive professional biography at her webpage here.

Two things about this interview were unusual:

First, the newswoman asking the questions was respectful and allowed Professor Erakat to give her responses fully without interruption, both rather unusual behaviors during those rare occasions when Palestinians appear on US corporate media.

Second, Ms. Erakat’s answers offered one of the most articulate, detailed and knowledgeable presentations of Palestinian suffering and their right to self-determination that I have ever seen on American television.

Your time will be well rewarded by taking the 8 minutes needed to watch. Just click below:

“PROPAGANDA 101: HOW TO DEFEND A MASSACRE,” A Superb Deconstruction of a Zionist Attempt to Justify Israel’s Slaughter of Palestinians

Current Affairs online magazine has an excellent article by Nathan J. Robinson entitled “PROPAGANDA 101: HOW TO DEFEND A MASSACRE.”

Recently, the New York Times — a staunchly pro-Zionist newspaper —  published an op-ed from Jewish Journal editor Shmuel Rosner entitled “Israel Needs to Protect Its Borders. By Whatever Means Necessary.”

Rosner is a typical apologist for political Zionism, evincing all the heartlessness and ideological blindness we have come to expect from such defenders of the indefenseless.

Mr. Robinson provides a text-book lesson in how to read as a critical thinker.  He does a marvelous job of deconstructing Rosner’s propaganda line-by-line.

I encourage  to read the entire piece. It will reward your effort many times over. Just click on the title above.  Thanks.

Learn to See Through Israeli & Christian Zionist Propaganda #christianzionism #memri #gaza

I looked in on the CBN website today just out of curiosity.  There I found an article on the many Palestinian people killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza under this headline:   ‘Hamas Sacrificing Children’: Why Gaza Clashes Aren’t Peaceful Protests but a Hamas-Inspired Death Cycle (dated 5/17/18).

Knowing that CBN is a major provider of “Christian news” in the US, and that an article like this will (mis)inform many, many more people than will ever read even-handed reports on what has happened in Gaza, I decided to use this article as an exercise in how to deconstruct propaganda.

This article is  pure propaganda for a Christian Zionist readership, intended (a) to tell people what they want to hear and thereby (b) reinforce what they already believe.  There is nothing informative about it.

  1. First, notice the headline.  The Hamas organization is mentioned 3 times.  In Zionist parlance, Hamas is nothing more than a deranged terrorist organization intent on destroying Israel by any means possible.  Thus, the headline immediately paints the past 7 weeks of protests as an exclusively Hamas-controlled, “terrorist” event designed somehow to destroy Israel.

Note the phrases “cult of death” and “sacrificing children,” both implicit references to the repeated Israeli refrain that all Palestinians — especially Hamas — raise their children to hate Jews; that they have no appreciation for life but only yearn to die as suicide bombers attacking Israelis.

So, the stage is set. This is a story about the irrational hatred of people whose only goal is to “drive Israel into the sea,” as Zionists love to repeat.

2. Second, notice that all the embedded videos, ostensibly providing evidence for the many inflammatory claims made throughout the article, come from MEMRI TV.

So, let’s check out MEMRI.  What is this organization? Where does it come from?  Who is behind it? A little investigation (take some time to read this investigative article from The Guardian newspaper by Brian Whitaker) will quickly reveal that MEMRI is a “non-profit institute” located in Washington, D.C. (subsidized by US tax dollars) established by former members of the Israeli intelligence services, i.e. it is a strongly Zionist outfit that exists in order to promote political Zionism in the English-speaking world.

It seems that MEMRI’s “research” method is to watch and read Arabic and Farsi (otherwise known as Persian; the language of Iran) TV, magazines and newspapers.  They find the most outlandish public statements possible — without providing any context, so the reader/viewer has no way of judging how representative the statements may be — and then disseminate those statements as if they represent the widespread views of the average Palestinian, Arab or Iranian.

THAT is a dishonest, misrepresentation of the facts, and it makes me angry to know that my tax dollars (and yours) are subsidizing this stuff!  It is not hard to find a convenient wacko saying something stupid wherever you look. (I am tempted to say, “Just turn on Christian TV.”) But using those kinds of words to depict an entire group of people as equally wacko is not only dishonest; it is also slanderous and racist, things that every Christian ought to stand against, call out and reject whenever possible.

3. Once we get into the body of the article, its first major point is that:

“…one Hamas official admitted that 50 of the 62 people killed were Hamas members, a group labeled a terrorist organization by the US State Department.”

Let’s ask a few questions about this statement:

(a) 62 people were killed on Monday, May 14 alone.  The total number of dead over the entire period of the protests was 112 – 120, while the wounded were 12,000 – 20,000.  The article deliberately fudges the death toll and fails to mention the injured in order to downplay the vast numbers of people shot by Israeli soldiers.

(b) Is the so-called “Hamas official” a genuine Hamas spokesman? I don’t know. That needs investigation.

(c) If he is, does he know what he is talking about? Is he telling the truth? Or is this another example of an organization taking credit for something it didn’t really do? That happens often. This also needs investigation.

(d) Reminding us that Hamas is “labeled a terrorist organization by the US State Department” is intended to give the claim special authority, legitimizing it.  However, our State Department works in lockstep with the Israeli government and its own views on its “enemies.” So, this assertion is nothing more than a tautology, i.e. the US government is repeating Israeli assertions. It has no independent value.

4. Yes, indeed, Hamas has committed past acts of violence against Israelis, though nothing of significance since Gaza was cordoned off in 2011. (We don’t have time or space here to address the claims of “rockets fired” from Gaza into Israel or the horrific genocide committed by the Israeli military against civilians in Gaza.  I urge you to watch the new documentary, “Killing Gaza”, by the journalists Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen).

But, within Gaza, Hamas functions largely as a political organization which many people join because they need connections to get a job, or they are involved in Hamas-sponsored community/youth activities. Also, not every member of Hamas is involved in their military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.  In fact, the majority of Hamas members are not part of its military wing. They are two different things.

5. But even if all of the people shot and killed by Israeli snipers in Gaza were members of Hamas, since when does membership in an organization frowned upon by the government give the military permission to kill unarmed people — unarmed men, women and children often standing hundreds of yards away?  Is it permissible to shoot anyone simply because they are/may be members of Hamas?

6. The article continues to misrepresent what actually happened in Gaza, as all major US media outlets have also done.  So we read that these deaths resulted from“confrontations with Israeli troops as they [the Palestinians] tried to breach the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel.”

Yes, even this man was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper while sitting in his wheelchair.

(a) Go scan the net. Watch the many videos now available about the Gazan Land Day Marches.  I have.  I have not seen a single one that merits the label “confrontation.” That word implies close contact between two groups, which would require Palestinians to be on the opposite side of their fence, able to make physical contact with Israeli soldiers.  I have not seen or heard of any place where this happened.  In fact, even Israel admits that not one single soldier along the fence was injured in any way. There was no “breach” of the “border” anywhere.  Period.  There were no “confrontations.”  There were only unarmed people being shot dead by army snipers positioned many, many, many yards away.

Neither have I see anyone throw a bomb or Molotov cocktail or shoot a missile.  Though these charges are often repeated, I have yet to see a scrap of evidence to substantiate them.  Have you?

Norman Finkelstein is an historian with a special focus on the history of Israel-Palestine. He is the son of Holocaust survivors.

(b) As Norman Finkelstein has ably explained (here, here, and here ) the huge fence surrounding Gaza is not a border. The fence is not delineating two countries.  It is a prison boundary, unilaterally and arbitrarily constructed by Israel to confine the Palestinians living there.  It is ghetto fence; something that should haunt every Jew who aims a rifle into it. Palestinians hate this fence because it keeps them confined like animals in a cage.

Followers of Jesus Christ are supposed to be supremely devoted to telling the truth and eschewing lies.  That includes a refusal to spread misinformation.  Furthermore, everyone, but especially those who claim to be God’s people, need to exercise the common sense of reading responsibly, evaluating our sources of information, and testing the veracity of claims made by so-called “authorities.”

Shame on CBN for spreading lies and misinformation about the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Shame on all Christian Zionists for holding their Zionist ideology as more sacred than Jesus’ own convictions about truth, honesty and justice.

Scot McKnight’s Post About Israel, Christians and Palestinians #Gaza #Christianzionism #courtevangelicals

Scot McKnight has a good blog post today criticizing Israel’s brutality in Gaza this past month.  He also takes the opportunity to respond to his “hate mail” (why don’t I ever receive hate mail?) from fellow Christians (why is anyone claiming to be a Christian sending hate mail?) condemning him for failing to support Israel as he should.

Scot’s response is spot on.  Here is an excerpt, but I do recommend reading it all at his blog, Jesus Creed:

“It was a shameful thing for evangelical pastors to be celebrating the opening of the embassy in Jerusalem while just a few miles away the Israeli army was killing dozens of Palestinian protesters against Israeli policies. (The death toll stood at 60 as of Tuesday, Palestinian officials said, and more than 1,700 people had been hospitalized.) It’s shameful, not only because they use their theology to make the moving of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem a matter of “eternal” significance, but also because they refuse to hold the Netanyahu government accountable for Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, some of whom are themselves evangelical Christians.

“Do I fear being cursed by God for saying that it was a shameful thing for these two pastors to join in the celebration at the opening of the Jerusalem embassy? No, because those who so easily invoke that ancient promise fail to think about what it covers. I do want God to “bless” Israel, as did the ancient prophets who regularly delivered divine messages to their compatriots.

“But those prophets never called for an uncritical acceptance of whatever happened to be the current policies and practices of Israel’s leaders. Here, for example, is a typical one of those ancient messages from the Lord: “So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice” (Malachi 3:5)…”